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How Hamas became invisible The greatest trick these vicious Islamists ever pulled was convincing the world they didn’t exist. Tim Black

By on January 23rd, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/01/22/how-hamas-became-invisible/

Almost as soon as the Israel-Hamas ceasefire was declared on Sunday, footage of Hamas fighters on Gaza’s streets was being broadcast to the world. We saw masked assailants, armed with Kalashnikovs and sporting green headbands, riding pick-up trucks through crowds of cheering men in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. We heard reports of thousands of Hamas-run police in uniform emerging on to rubble-strewn streets. Most striking of all, Hamas fighters were filmed swarming around three Israeli hostages during their handover to the Red Cross in Gaza City. The message being sent around the world was clear: this movement of violent anti-Semites is still a force. It’s still in control of Gaza. And it’s still a threat to the Jewish State.

The sight of Hamas out and about over the past few days should have surprised no one. After all, they’re the reason Israeli forces have been waging a painful, brutal military campaign there for the past 15 months. Yet incredibly, too many in the Western media did indeed seem shocked. It was as if it didn’t compute. ‘That was the one image that really knocked me back a bit’, said Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s international editor, on Monday morning’s Today programme. ‘[Hamas fighters] just emerged… in their trucks, which were somehow still intact’, he said. In an attempt to explain the seemingly inexplicable, he added, ‘I presume they must have been parked in some kind of tunnel perhaps’.

Bowen wasn’t the only member of the press corps to have to scoop their jaws off the floor. Others called the ‘remarkable’ scenes a ‘stark reminder’ that Hamas continues to exist.

This shock and surprise at the seeming re-appearance of Hamas is telling. After all, it is coming from those same press outlets that have spent the past 15 months of this devastating conflict erasing Hamas from the picture. Since Hamas’s massacre of Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023, too many Western reporters, pundits and politicians have presented the subsequent conflict as if it involved only one combatant: Israel. In fact, watching or reading the media coverage, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Israel Defence Forces were not really fighting Hamas at all, but Palestinian civilians.

This erasure of Hamas from the conflict it started serves the anti-Israel narrative that has long been dominant among the right-thinking classes. It allows for the fiction that this is not a war at all. That it’s an act of aggressive ‘colonisation’. An act of ‘ethnic cleansing’. An act of ‘genocide’ against the Palestinians.

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Execution Frenzy in Iran How much longer will the West turn its back? by Struan Stevenson

By on January 23rd, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/execution-frenzy-in-iran/

The world can no longer ignore the crimes against humanity being committed in Iran. Last year over 1,000 executions took place in 86 of the mullahs’ medieval prisons. Those hanged included 34 women and 7 juvenile offenders, executed after they turned 18. Among those executed were 119 Baluchis, highlighting the disproportionate targeting of this marginalized and oppressed ethnic group.

Barbarically, 4 of the hangings were carried out in public in an attempt to terrify the rebellious youth into placid submission.  Public hangings are generally from a construction crane, an especially slow and agonizing execution method.The frenzy of executions, over 70% of which took place since the so called ‘moderate’ president Masoud Pezeshkian took office in August, are testimony to the theocratic regime’s fear of imminent overthrow.

The psychotic and ageing Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has watched the gradual unraveling of his warmongering stranglehold in the region, with the decapitation of his proxies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The sudden and unexpected fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Islamic Republic’s greatest ally, has sounded the death knell for the mullahs’ regime. Now, Khamenei can only shudder in anticipation of the arrival of President Donald Trump, with his maximum pressure sanctions campaign and his unwavering antipathy to the Iranian regime’s sponsorship of international terrorism.

Ever since the mullahs hijacked the popular revolution that ousted the dictatorship of the Shah in 1979, they have resorted to bouts of brutal repression at times of crisis to subdue the populace. But their atrocities only strengthen the determination of the Iranian youth to overthrow the fascist tyranny. The regime must be ostracized by the international community and any dealings with it should be conditional on an end to executions and torture. Its leaders must be brought to justice. There can no longer be a business-as-usual approach by Western appeasers. Too much innocent blood is being spilled as Khamenei sets new records for crimes and executions in a bid to delay his inevitable downfall.

According to Amnesty International, the number of executions in Iran in 2023 accounted for about 74% of all documented executions worldwide. That record has been surpassed in 2024. Undeterred, the regime began the New Year with a fresh wave of hangings. 12 people were executed on 1 January 2025. Five prisoners were executed in Qezelhessar prison, five in Bandar Abbas and two more in Yasuj and Malayer. Among those executed were 119 Baluchis, highlighting the disproportionate targeting of this marginalized and oppressed ethnic group.

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Democratic Republic of Congo: Muslims murder at least 53 Christians in two jihad attacks on the same day Robert Spencer

By on January 23rd, 2025

https://jihadwatch.org/2025/01/democratic-republic-of-congo-muslims-murder-at-least-53-christians-in-two-jihad-attacks-on-the-same-day?utm_

“More Than 50 D. R. Congo Christians Killed in Single Day of Violence,” Barnabas Aid, January 16, 2025:

At least 53 Christians were killed on January 15 in two Islamist attacks in Lubero, North Kivu, north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP, also known as the Allied Democratic Forces) announced the killings in two social media posts, according to the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium (TRAC).

One of the two posts declared, “By the grace of God Almighty, the soldiers of the Caliphate attacked the village of Makoko in the Lubero region and killed 41 Christians [who] were stabbed with knives.”

The other post confirmed killing of 12 others in the village of Masakuki.

The terrorist group also abducted 16 Christians, as well as burning houses and motorcycles.

Attacks of this type have been carried out consistently by ISCAP since the group first affiliated to Islamic State (IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) in 2017. However, the scale and frequency of the attacks has increased in the past few weeks.

Relentless Targeting of Christians

Including the January 15 attacks, at least 128 have been slaughtered in North Kivu and the neighboring province of Ituri since Christmas Day 2024….

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The Red Cross is humiliated as it again serves murderers of Jews It succeeded in making its profile invisible while not gaining the release of a single hostage or providing them with any assistance.Mitchell Bard

By on January 23rd, 2025

https://www.jns.org/the-red-cross-is-humiliated-as-it-again-serves-murderers-of-jews/?utm_campaign=

It was a joyous moment to see three female Israeli hostages finally released from 15 months of harrowing captivity. That happiness was tempered by the disgusting spectacle orchestrated by Hamas and enabled by the Red Cross. This humiliating episode highlighted its total failure to assist Jewish victims, evoking bitter memories of its inaction during the Holocaust.

I wrote in November 2023 about the attitude of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from the beginning of the war. On Oct. 7, 2023, the ICRC released a statement expressing concern over “armed violence in Israel and the occupied territories.” This mealy-mouthed response ignored the slaughter of civilians by Hamas terrorists, instead framing the events as mutual violence and subtly implicating Israel.

Days later, the ICRC issued another statement acknowledging “premeditated killings of civilians” but avoided identifying either the perpetrators or victims. In the same breath, it criticized Israeli “bombings in residential neighborhoods,” drawing a false equivalence between terror massacres and defensive military actions.

It took more than a month before the American Red Cross said the ICRC was pursuing “every possible avenue to secure the release of all remaining hostages.” It would remain silent, however, because its experience—ignoring the Holocaust—was that it was most effective if it kept a low profile. Well, it succeeded in making its profile invisible while not gaining the release of a single hostage or providing them with assistance.

For the transfer, they showed up as if they were heroes when they were essentially Uber drivers taking the former hostages a few miles to an awaiting military helicopter.

First, though, they played a part in the grotesque Hamas spectacle in which heavily armed masked terrorists in freshly laundered uniforms delivered and surrounded the hostages. Hundreds of jeering civilians lined the streets celebrating the dehumanization of the women right to the end of their ordeal. Civilians, including children—frequently portrayed as innocent victims of “genocide”—actively participated in the degradation of survivors of the Hamas massacre.

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Brussels: Is the Capital of Europe Crumbling Before Our Eyes? by Drieu Godefridi

By on January 22nd, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21327/brussels-crumbling

Brussels has entered a wild-west era of “every man for himself,” in which people try to protect themselves as best they can without relying on the failing “authorities.”

Brussels’ financial situation is also alarming.

[Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration] Nicole de Moor… did acknowledge the problem of the high number of Palestinian asylum-seekers in Belgium, and that they had already been recognized elsewhere in Europe. Nevertheless, they demand to come to Belgium: it guarantees them more than any other country in Europe.

Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the streets and media of Brussels have witnessed the normalization of unabashed Islamist discourse and Jew-hatred — less and less hidden behind the pretext of “the fight against Zionism.”

When President Donald Trump compared Brussels, Belgium to a “hellhole” in 2016, the statement caused quite a stir, especially in Europe, and was treated with that mixture of contempt, ignorance and denial of reality typical of a certain “elite” in the European Union. Trump had made these remarks in the context of discussions on immigration and security, and suggested that Brussels had changed for the worse over the years, mainly as a result of uncontrolled lawless migratory submersion.

While the facts proved him right at the time, it might be said in 2025 that the Lebanonization of Brussels shows that his judgment was visionary.

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Germany’s Cultural Elites Perverted “Debate” on Israel by Gerald M. Steinberg

By on January 21st, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21338/germany-cultural-elites-israel

Fringe activists and their “positions of moral outrage” continue to be funded by the German government, with high visibility platforms to promote their blatant anti-Israel and antisemitic campaigns.

In the face of poisonous propaganda, the Bundestag resolutions calling for an end to German government funding to “organizations or projects that spread antisemitism [or] question Israel’s right to exist” are important. Implementing them and stopping the support via cultural and academic institutions will not “silence” the voices of hate, but at least the German state will no longer be providing them with resources or legitimacy.

On November 22, 2024, at the National Gallery of Berlin, the American photographer and political activist Nan Goldin asked, “Why can’t I speak, Germany?” With apparently no sense of irony, she spoke at a lectern in front of a large audience, with numerous phones pointing at her, at the opening of her retrospective, titled “This will not end well.” The subject of her talk was not her artistic portfolio but rather her political agenda on Israel.

An enthusiastic audience applauded her outrage and indignation over the “genocide” in Gaza and Lebanon, and her immoral equivalence between the Palestinian population after the October 7 atrocities with pogroms against Jews under the Russian Empire. Goldin’s false claim that “antizionism has nothing to do with antisemitism” was followed by loud chants of appreciation and applause.

The one person who could not speak was the National Gallery’s Director, Klaus Biesenbach, who was shouted down when he attempted to distance himself from her statement, while adding the obligatory and obvious defense of Goldin’s right to express herself.

The “Nan Goldin incident” was widely covered in prominent media platforms, including the New York Times and German press, as well as in social media, almost everywhere repeating her false accusations regarding the ostensible silencing of Israel’s critics. Goldin is one of a number of examples (another is Judith Butler) in which Jewish anti-Israel activists are used by Germans as fig-leaves to claim that their agendas should not be labeled as antisemitic.

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In Ireland Today, the Antisemitism is So Wide and Deep That One Despairs Hugh Fitzgerald

By on January 21st, 2025

https://jihadwatch.org/2025/01/in-ireland-today-the-antisemitism-is-so-wide-and-deep-that-one-despairs?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=in-ireland-today-the-antisemitism-is-so-wide-and-deep-that-one-despairs

The government of Ireland has just announced that it has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. Here is that definition: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” Most of those adopting that definition also point to various examples of different ways in which that antisemitism is expressed.

Such a decision — to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism — is always to be welcomed, but given how antisemitic many Irish, including those at the very top of the government, have shown themselves to be this past year, in truly hair-raising pronouncements by the Irish president, Michael Higgins, the prime minister Simon Harris, the foreign minister Micheal Martin, the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland Eamonn Martin, and the head of the Anglican Church in Ireland, Canon David Oxley, it’s hard to see that that adoption of the IHRA will do much good with those people still in office.

Ireland is, said one leader of the Irish Jewish community, the “most antisemitic” of all member states in the EU, and this announcement looks to be more of an attempt to deflect criticism rather than a genuine expression of sympathetic understanding for Jews, a tiny and embattled people fighting a seven-front war, who are now experiencing an increase in antisemitism worldwide that has not been seen since the days of the Nazis. More on what has been going on in Ireland that vitiates its pretense of becoming, if not a supporter of Israel, at least not a relentless and obsessive enemy of both the Jewish state and also of Jews, can be found here: “Ireland Adopts IHRA Definition of Antisemitism Amid Row With Israel,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, January 17, 2025:

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Australia is in the grips of an anti-Semitic nightmare How many more synagogues will be torched before the elites take this threat seriously? Hugo Timms

By on January 21st, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/01/21/australia-is-in-the-grips-of-an-anti-semitic-nightmare/

The standard you walk past, as the famous Australian saying goes, is the standard you accept. Unfortunately for Jewish Australians, the standard set by the Labor government when it comes to anti-Semtism could hardly be any lower.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Australians woke to the news that a Sydney childcare centre had been firebombed and sprayed with anti-Semitic graffiti. Last weekend, two masked figures attempted (and failed) to burn down a synagogue. Theses would once have been significant national events. But not so now, in Anthony Albanese’s Australia. They were merely just the latest of several recent attacks on Jewish property.

In December, Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue, in the prominent and historic Jewish suburb of Ripponlea, was burnt to the ground in possibly the most significant act of anti-Semitism in Australian history. Last week, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, two cars were set alight, many more were graffitied with anti-Semitic slogans, and the former home of Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, was doused in red paint.

Anti-Semitism now pervades Australian society. It began, as most of the world now knows, on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, with crowds celebrating Hamas’s atrocities on 7 October 2023. It blossomed into regular, vicious anti-Israel marches, including one mourning the death of Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader responsible for the indiscriminate bombing of northern Israel. During that time, protesters have routinely damaged the offices of politicians deemed supportive of Israel – and they’ve done so, for the most part, with impunity. By the time the office of Jewish MP Josh Burns was targeted last June, with vandals deploying an age-old anti-Semitic trope by adorning his photograph with Satanic horns, hardly anyone could claim to be surprised.

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Her name is Emily Damari The left will never live down the shame of staying silent on the racist kidnapping of a British Jew. Brendan O’Neill

By on January 21st, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/01/20/her-name-is-emily-damari/

There is a British woman who survived 15 months at the hands of a neo-fascist militia. A woman who was cruelly deprived of her liberty and dignity by racist monsters and yet who emerged from that hell smiling and defiant. A woman who spent her 28th birthday in the bondage of an army of bigots. A woman who was subjected to the most intolerable persecutions for one ‘crime’ and one ‘crime’ only – she’s a Jew.

And yet if you said her name on the streets of Britain, many people would not know who she was. No one on the ‘anti-racist’ left held a vigil for her. The activists of Antifa raised not a peep of concern for this Jew seized by a racist army. These people see ‘fascism’ everywhere, in every utterance made by Donald Trump, every bristling against mass immigration, every criticism of the Koran. Yet when a fellow Brit was cruelly incarcerated by a movement founded with the express intention of murdering Jews, they said not a word. To them everything is fascism, except fascism.

Her name is Emily Damari. Go and say it to people. Let them know that a British citizen was kidnapped by Hamas and that British ‘progressives’ said nothing. Let them know that this British-Israeli was brutalised by Jew-killers and it made not so much as a dent in the conscience of Britain’s bourgeois left. The people who cry ‘black lives matter’ and ‘trans lives matter’ and ‘Muslims matter’ could not bring themselves to utter these three poxy words: ‘Emily Damari matters.’

Ms Damari was taken from her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza in southern Israel during Hamas’s orgy of barbarism on 7 October 2023. She was shot in the hand, causing her to lose two fingers. She was dragged to Gaza where she spent 471 days in the captivity of anti-Semites. She was released yesterday, as part of Phase 1 of the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, along with two other women: Romi Gonen, 24, and Doron Steinbrecher, 31. I have come ‘back to life’, said Emily on Instagram after her release.

To be clear, Emily was not forgotten. Britain’s Jewish community held vigils for her. Fans of Tottenham Hotspur – the team she supports – campaigned for her release. So did fans of Arsenal. Not for the first time, working-class football fans showed themselves to be the moral backbone of the nation, as our ‘betters’ shamefully looked the other way. It fell mostly to Emily’s heroic mother, Mandy, to keep her daughter’s plight in the headlines. Her dogged campaigning even compelled government officials to break their reprehensible silence and speak on the racist brutalisation of one of their own people.

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Is Global South Going South? by Amir Taheri

By on January 20th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21324/global-south

In Iran itself, even figures within the “southern” system are beginning to realize that their regime may be heading south.

In what is labeled “the Greater Middle East”, another shibboleth that is best avoided, there is an overwhelming desire for social reform, economic development and political participation, in other words for heading “north” rather than “south.”

A new generation of leaders has understood that unless they turn change into an ally, they risk turning it into a mortal foe.

Always anxious to portray the Islamic Republic of Iran in a world leadership position, the official media in Tehran have been trumpeting a three-day visit by President Masoud Pezeshkian to Dushanbe and Moscow as a “significant strengthening of the global south.”

You might wonder what the “global south” is all about.

This is a cliché invented in the 1970s to distinguish “Third World” countries from the two blocs of East and West, without abandoning its sister cliché of “non-aligned world.”

With globalism in decline if not actually moribund yet, the “global south” is gaining new adepts in circles seeking to divide humanity on ideological grounds, with Western democracies cast as villains as authoritarian regimes as choirboys.

Dividing the world on pseudo-geographical lines has a long history. The Roman Empire regarded the Persian Empire on its east as a cultural alternative, if not an existential threat. In medieval times, the concept of the Orient alternately depicted a seductive or a repulsive model for the Occident.

Karl Marx, who pretended to have discovered laws of human history, found it necessary to acknowledge that his analysis didn’t apply to “Asiatic societies,” by which he meant the whole world outside Europe and North America.

The English imperialist poet Rudyard Kipling, a literary giant but a political pygmy, played a similar chord: “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”

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